Bian lived in a three-bedroom apartment in a new complex. It was an expensive location, unusual for an intellectual. Bian himself opened the door for Chen. A medium-built man in his mid-seventies, with silver hair shining against a ruddy complexion, Bian looked quite spirited for his age, and for his life experience. A young “rightist” in the fifties, a middle-aged “historical counterrevolutionary” during the Cultural Revolution, and an old “intellectual model” in the nineties, Bian had clung to his literature studies like a life vest all those years.
“This is far from enough to show my respect to you, Professor Bian,” Chen said, holding up the ham. He then tried to find a place to put it down, but the new expensive furniture appeared too good for the ham wrapped in the oily tung paper.
“Thank you, Chief Inspector Chen,” Bian said. “Our dean has talked to me about you. Considering your workload, we have just decided that you don’t have to sit in the classroom like other students, but you still have to turn in your papers on time.”
“I appreciate the arrangement. Of course I’ll hand in papers like other students.”
A young woman walked light-footed into the living room. She looked to be in her early thirties, dressed in a black mandarin dress and high-heeled sandals. She relieved Chen of the ham and put it on the coffee table.
“Fengfeng, my most capable daughter,” Bian said. “A CEO of an American-Chinese joint venture.”
“A most unfilial daughter,” she said. “I studied business administration instead of Chinese literature. Thank you for choosing him, Chief Inspector Chen. It’s a boost to his ego to have a celebrity student.”
“No, it’s an honor for me.”
“You’re doing great on the police force, Chief Inspector Chen. Why do you want to study in the program?” she wanted to know.
“Literature makes nothing happen,” the old man joined in with a self-depreciating smile. “She, in contrast, bought the apartment, which was way beyond my means. So we live here-one country with two systems.”
One country with two systems-a political catch phrase invented by Comrade Deng Xiaoping to describe socialist mainland China’s coexistence with the capitalist Hong Kong after 1997. Here, it described a family whose members earned money from two different systems. Chen understood that people questioned his decision, but he tried not to care too much.
“It’s like a road not taken, always so tempting to think about on a snowy night,” he said, “and also a boost to one’s ego to imagine an alternative career.”
“I have to ask a favor of you,” she said. “Father has diabetes and high blood pressure. He does not go to school every day. Can you come here to study instead?”
“Sure, if it’s convenient for him.”
“Don’t you remember the line by Gao Shi?” Bian said. “‘Alas, the most useless is a scholar.’ Here I am, an old man capable of only ‘carving insects’ at home.”
“Literature is of significance for a thousand autumns,” Chen said, quoting a line in response.
“Well, your passion for literature is something. As in a Chinese saying, people with the same sickness pity one another. Of course, you may have to worry about your own kind of ‘thirsty illness.’ You are a romantic poet, I’ve heard.”
Xiaoke zhi ji-thirsty illness. Chen had heard the term before, in reference to diabetes, which made one thirsty and tired. Bian had a way of talking, making a subtle reference both to his diabetes and to his thirst for literature, but what did that have to do with Chen’s being a romantic poet?
When Chen got back into the car waiting for him outside, he caught Little Zhou examining a naked model in a copy of Playboy from Hong Kong. The term “thirsty illness” in ancient China, Chen suddenly recalled, might have been a metaphor for a young man’s helpless romantic passion.
Then he was not so sure. He could have read the term somewhere but mixed it up with irrelevant associations. Sitting in the car, he found himself thinking like a cop again, searching for an explanation for Professor Bian’s usage. He shook his head at his confused reflection in the rearview mirror.
Still, he felt good. The prospect of starting the literature program made the difference.
TWO
DETECTIVE YU GUANGMING, OF the Shanghai Police Bureau, sat brooding in the office-not exactly his, not yet. As the acting head of the special case squad, Yu had the office during Chen’s leave.
Few seemed to take Yu seriously, though he had been in effective charge of the squad for longer periods before: weeks when Chen had been too busy, what with his political meetings and his well-paid translations. Still, Yu was seen as stepping in the shadow of Chen.
What troubled Yu was Chen’s inexplicable determination to undertake the literature program. It was a decision that had given rise to numerous interpretations at the bureau. According to Liao Guochang, head of the homicide squad, Chen was trying to stay low after having ruffled high feathers, and so was adopting a bookish pose to keep himself out of the limelight for a while. It seemed to Little Zhou that Chen had his eye on a MA or a PhD-something crucial to his future career, for an advanced degree made a huge difference in the new policy of the Party cadre promotion. Commissar Zhang, a semiretired cadre of the older generation, saw Chen’s studies in a different light, claiming that Chen planned to study abroad with a hongyan zhiji-an appreciating and understanding beauty-who was a US marshal. Like most of the rumors about Chen, no one could prove or disprove it.
Yu was not so sure about any of those views. And there was another possibility he could not rule out: something else might be going on. Chen had asked him about a housing development case without offering any explanation, which was unusual between the chief inspector and Yu.
Yu did not have much time to worry that morning. Party Secretary Li had summoned him to Inspector Liao’s office.
Liao was a solidly built man in his early forties, owlish-looking with an aquiline nose and round eyes. He frowned at Yu’s entrance.
At the bureau, only a case of extraordinary political significance would go to the special case squad under Chen and Yu. Liao’s sour expression implied that another case proved to be too much for Homicide.
“Comrade Detective Yu, you have heard about the red mandarin dress case,” Li said, more a statement than a question.
“Yes,” Yu responded. “A sensational case.”
A week earlier, a girl’s body in a red mandarin dress had been found in a flower bed on West Huaihai Road. Because of its proximity to a number of high-end stores, the case had been much reported and was now conveniently nicknamed the red mandarin dress case. The news about it had caused a terrible traffic jam in the area-people hurried over, window-shopping and gossip-shopping, in addition to all the photographers and journalists milling around, information-shopping.
Newspapers went wild with theories. No murderer would have dumped a body in such a dress, at such a location, without some reason. One reporter saw it pointing to someone at the Shanghai Music Institute, located across the street opposite the flower bed. One deemed it a political case, a protest against the reversal of values in socialist China, for the mandarin dress, once condemned as a sign of capitalistic decadence, had become popular again. A tabloid magazine went further, speculating that the murder had been orchestrated by a fashion industry tycoon. Ironically, one result of the media coverage was that several stores immediately displayed new lines of mandarin dresses in their windows.
Yu had noticed the mystifying aspects of the case. According to the initial forensic report, bruises on her arms and legs indicated that the victim could have been sexually assaulted before death of suffocation, but no trace of semen was found on or in the body, and the body had been washed after her death. She had nothing on underneath the dress, which was in contradiction to the common dress code. Then the location itself was so public that few would have chosen to dump a body there.